4 Websites I Find Compelling
com·pel·ling (kəmˈpeliNG/)
adjective; evoking interest, attention, or admiration in a powerfully irresistible way
I have found all of these artists through Tumblr, and have followed some of them for over 2 years now. I enjoy seeing others grow as artists, and seeing their art through those stages has pushed me to improve my own (photography AND with pen and paper).
asieybarbie.com
vestien.tumblr.com
blackyjunkgallery.tumblr.com
gallery.yu-fei.com
Watching Schindler’s List reminded me why I wanted to pursue work in film; Spielberg told the story of Osakar Schindler and the Schindlerjuden and did it justice. There were no action scenes or romantic subplots to add fluff. Rather, all 3 hours and 15 minutes of the film were dedicated to exploring the events and themes surrounding the Holocaust and the Schindlerjuden. Schindler’s List was able to combine many different elements of film (narrative, soundtrack and cinematography) each effective on their own, and create a harmonious and beautiful film.
The scene that best highlighted the soundtrack was the scene where the ghettos were being raided by the SS and the Commander was playing the piano. The piano was playing the whole time, amongst the sounds of the soldiers and the gunshots. It even sounded like they were a counter medley to the piano, and as if they belonged exactly where they were. This fantastic sound design was likely done on purpose to point out the contrast between something as tame as the piano and the sounds of soldiers murdering the innocent.
One of the most famous scenes in the film is one with little dialogue, and one speck of color. The girl in the red coat, whose coat is the only thing in the whole film shown in color, is walking through the streets of the ghetto while the SS are drag people from their homes, and either shoot them in the streets or send them to the concentration camps. The red looks like blood, but it is still dark even against the dark blacks in the rest of the grayscale scene. When I was researching why Spielberg did this, I found a quote by him saying that he wanted the girl to represent the violence against the Jewish people in Europe. He said that it was as clear as a girl in a red coat walking down the street.
When I started reading and listening to the assignments for this week, I had a really difficult time trying to wrap my head around the phrase “the medium is the message”. Clearly it was the focus of the selections and would somehow tie into the concept of harmony when we discussed it in class but I still didn’t see how. What was “the medium” and how could it also be “the message”? McLuhan didn’t expressly state it in the selection from his book, but I think I was able to figure out what he was trying to say. He was clearly focused on the emergence of new technologies, even back in the 1960s, and he knew that people would quickly turn these new things into mediums for self-expression and further creation. So if new technology (television, the Internet) is the medium, then what could be the message? Rather than focus on the content when looking for a message, look within the medium itself. When it comes to message, what the content is saying doesn’t matter, but how people feel because of it. McLuhan asserts that how a technology is being used and what it does to those who see it is the crux of this “medium is the message” idea.
I later reviewed the Powerpoint to see how these selections could apply to the themes of harmony. I listened with headphones on and quickly heard that the sound channels were split (the words and music were played in different ears). The actual attention to where the listener would hear the words or music helped stress its importance based on location, which not many people think about when it comes to audio. This also adds to the emphasis and importance of certain lines, being isolated in one ear versus going through both. Besides this, the selections are also harmonious because of how well McLuhan mixed the varying styles of music and spoken word.
Both of these pictures were taken for my first Visual Studies I project on the concept of Gestalt. The goal was to incorporate the concepts of Gestalt we discussed in class while taking pictures down South Congress Ave. We were given a lot of free reign with what we could take pictures of,
I decided to achieve this goal by simply taking pictures as I always had. I did this because I realized I had been incorporating these concepts into my pictures all along, mostly unintentional and because I thought it would look aesthetically pleasing.
Self-Critique:
I chose to self-critique the first picture.
- What is the strongest aspect of this work? I believe the strongest aspect of this picture is how cohesive the natural lines are with the natural borders of the frame. All of the lines that are painted as well as formed by shadows create very interesting angles that better frame the woman at the center of the photo.
- What is the weakest aspect? I feel like the weakest aspect is that I didn’t play around with camera angles more. Despite the natural angles created in the photo, I feel like they could have been more pronounced if I had done some more experimenting on my end.
- How can the composition or form be improved? I wish the color of the woman’s dress could pop out more to match the top left corner’s bright blue. This would help separate the woman from the muted tan color of the wall.
- How can the project be strengthened conceptually? I feel that I can go back and try to focus more on certain concepts of Gestalt, such as continuity and closure.
- How can the project be strengthened technically? I can definitely practice editing with this picture, and seeing what I can touch upon when it comes to minor details.
- Additional notes. I feel that this picture is a step in the right direction of what I can learn to do in the next semester.
My first thought when I was looking at our assignment for this week was, “Why are we LISTENING to something for VISUAL Studies?” Even as I read and looked at the supplements given in addition to the recording, I still was at a loss for what to really reflect on.
But then I closed my eyes and I really thought about it.
I know have always been a more visual learner, needing to see words on a screen or pictures to actually GET what I was being taught. So I started listening to the picture that was being painted for me; I saw a city divided by a wall, each side with people and buildings near identical and huge amounts of guards keeping watch for anyone trying to cross. I imagined families separated by mere hundreds of feet, with no hope of possibly seeing each other again. Then I imagined Tunnel 57, and the countless students who worked for over half a year to dig a tunnel to breach the wall separating the East and West.
We weren’t shown these images (the complete opposite compared to last week, in which all we had were images) but we were forced to imagine them for ourselves. The writing and the storytelling urged our brains to use the methods of gestalt to form these images within our minds. The main concept used was closure, because our minds took the only information we were given and finished the pictures for us (and between any two of us, neither could say they ever saw the same thing).
This is why we’re listening for Visual Studies, because even without using images, our minds are powerful enough to create the images for us. Our minds want to fill in the blanks and tell a story, simply because that’s what our minds do.
All of the pictures in the short film were very captivating and beautiful, and if the title of the video weren’t a hint, I quickly realized that these were all pictures of nebulae and galaxies. I took the time to pause and look deeper at some of the frames, the colors and seemingly random shapes popping out to me first. The video was really fast paced, and didn’t give you much time to ponder over any one flashing image unless you took that time to pause. Overall, the images were kind of scary despite their beauty; the images looked grotesque and the white dots looked like lifeless white eyes. The lack of sound made it even more off-putting, simply because it left the sound to your own imagination.
Even after watching it a few times through, I am still not sure what exactly Brakhage was going for with this film. He could have just wanted to put together a short collection of his photos. But at the same time, I feel like the lack of clarity this seemingly random collection of pictures of the cosmos has indicates its meaning in and of itself. This random grouping of pictures achieved this, and the repetition of them all further drove that point home. I feel like Brakhage wanted people those who would see his short film to come up with their own ideas about his work and to look deeper than just the surface of the images flashing across the screen. He wanted us to see the meaning (our own meaning) with our own eyes.
Time Tracker
I never realized I was spending that much time in class.
A good portion of my days have been devoted to school, which I am happy to find (that’s where all the money is going, so I would really hope!) The rest is dispersed between quick meals, clubs, time for myself and friends, and homework. I mostly make up for sleep lost during the week on my free weekends, waking up at 2pm with the rest of my hall and seeing what everyone else on campus is up to. Things feel busy, but they feel the good kind of busy. The kind that I can manage and turn into a challenge. I still have the lingering cloud of procrastination hanging over my shoulder as I type, but it doesn’t feel so looming anymore. This activity sort of forced me to look at what time I had, and what I made of it, and what I could make of it in future weeks.
Discovery
This week, I’ve discovered that I’ve started to make some really good friends here at St. Eds. These friends have already started to push me out of my comfort zone (going dancing on 4th was not part of my original college plan, I can tell you that) and have been there for me whenever I just need someone to talk to. I am loving it here, and I’ve discovered that I truly made the right choice when it came to school.
I had the amazing opportunity to take a year long Web Design class my senior year of high school. Not only did we learn about various ways of using HTML and other coding, but we learned the basics of Photoshop and how we could use it to create various images for different things. I had the most fun making CD covers for various albums and bands I liked. As the picture says, this is for the Arctic Monkeys’ album “Whatever People Say I Am, That’s What I’m Not”. The real cover for the album features a young “tea boy” (hooligan, rapscallion) smoking a cigarette after spending a long night out on the town. The picture plus the title of the album was meant to represent just how much is truly behind the people we may see everyday, and write off as a troublemaker or a nobody. So I decided to take a random picture I found online, which shows an even younger boy being bullied by two others. I thought about what people might say about the boy being bullied, and I also thought about what people might say about the bullies. It really made me think about the fact that people were saying things about me, negative and positive, and no matter what they were, I wasn’t them. It made me both happy and lonely to think that the only person who truly knows me is.. me.
I took this picture a few days after I got a small point-and-shoot camera from my dad for Christmas last year. I was in DC for a few hours (I live about a mile from the border over in Maryland), waiting to pick my sister up from the bus station. I was taking pictures of whatever interested me and I could reach from the passenger’s window. I believe the picture above is of a school or office near the station. When I took the picture, I enjoyed the light bouncing off the barbed wire fence and how the building in the background wasn’t quite in focus. Looking back on it later, it looks like I took a picture of a prison (even though barbed wire isn’t uncommon even in residential and shopping areas in the city). I mainly enjoy this picture because I was able to make something I was proud of even with my limited knowledge of my camera at the time.
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